Malwarebytes releases State of Malware report Growth in attacks designed to obfuscate access and purpose should put organizations on alert as cybercriminals gain control over endpoints to do just about anything they want. The most dangerous cyberattack is the one you don’t know about. That’s exactly what cybercriminals are focusing on, according to Malwarebytes’ 2019 State of Malware report. If an attack can either run completely in stealth, or simply hide their true intention, in many ways, they’ve already won. According to the report, two very specific types of attacks are on the rise from 2017 to 2018: Trojans saw a 132% increase Backdoors saw a 173% increase Trojans and backdoors Malwarebytes defines each of these separately. Trojans are programs "that claim to perform one function but actually do another", with Backdoors defined as "a type ... Read More

Scammers using hijacked GoDaddy domains to launch large-scale spam campaigns GoDaddy took steps in January, 2019 to address the authentication flaw exploited by the attackers, according to Brian Krebs. Krebs first reported on the authentication weakness on January 22nd, when he outlined two massive spam campaigns during 2018 that were very successful at getting into people’s inboxes. Their success was due to the fact that the emails were sent through trusted but dormant domains, many of which were registered and owned by Fortune 500 companies. Anti-spam researcher Ron Guilmette discovered that nearly all of these domains had used GoDaddy’s DNS service at some point. The scammers had realized that they could add domains to their GoDaddy accounts without proving that they owned the domains. GoDaddy quickly addressed the ... Read More

Social engineering on Wikipedia Social engineering scammers are selectively editing Wikipedia pages. These lend credibility to tech support scams, according to Rob VandenBrink at the SANS Internet Storm Center. The Wikipedia page for the SpyEye banking Trojan was changed in mid-December to include a typo-ridden paragraph which claims that only three tech companies can remove the malware, and that “Best buy, Geek squad, Office Depo will not be able to fix it at all.” <sic> VandenBrink says that the scammer made these edits to convince victims that “only we can help you fix this (fake of course) infection you have on your computer.” The edit history of the Wikipedia user who made the changes shows that the account made similar edits to the “Macro virus” Wikipedia page, ... Read More

In-house phishing tests identify at-risk users As compliance mandates and consumer privacy laws get tougher, businesses are taking matters into their own hands, launching internal phishing attacks to identify at-risk users. Phishing remains a profitable tactic for cybercriminal organizations. The ability to gain access to internal systems, compromise credentials, or convince a user to wire money is well within the cybercriminals reach, accomplishing these attack results and more on a daily basis. Organizations like UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, NC receive over 91 million suspicious emails a every quarter, with a little more than 8 million still getting past security scanners. Even with 30,000 employees, that still represents an average of about 4 phishing emails a day per user. University of North Carolina sends 3,000 phishing tests a ... Read More

Sextortion is the newest cyber crime Sextortion scam emails are circulating. They claim that a popular adult site has been hacked, allowing an attacker to record videos of you through your webcam, according to Lawrence Abrams at BleepingComputer. The attacker claims that these videos will be sent to all of the victim’s contacts unless the victim pays the equivalent of $969 to the attacker’s Bitcoin address. The emails also include a victim’s old password obtained from a past data breach in an attempt to frighten the victim. Victims Additionally, some of the emails contain links, supposedly leading to sample videos of the victim as proof of the attacker’s claims. These links have been known to install malware, such as ransomware, in past campaigns. BleepingComputer observes that the Bitcoin address in ... Read More

Phish attack meeting requests A widespread phishing campaign is targeting executives across a number of industries. The messages ask to reschedule a board meeting in an effort to steal logins and passwords. Spotted by researchers at security firm GreatHorn, the phishing messages spoof the name and email address of the CEO of the company being targeted and uses a subject line including the company name and a note about the meeting to gain the attention of potential victims. Users are more likely to fall for attacks they believe to come from their boss. The contents of the phishing email is simple: it says a board meeting has been rescheduled and asks users to take part in a poll to choose a new date. Office 365 If users click the link, they're taken to a ... Read More

Late last month, Daniel R. Coats, Director of National Intelligence reported on Threats to US national security gave the 40,000 foot view of cyber threats. I'm quoting them here. Summary of Cyber Threats China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s, and the relationship is likely to strengthen in the coming year as some of their interests and threat perceptions converge, particularly regarding perceived US unilateralism and interventionism and Western promotion of democratic values and human rights. As China and Russia seek to expand their global influence, they are eroding once well-established security norms and increasing the risk of regional conflicts, particularly in the Middle East and East Asia. At the same time, some US allies and partners are seeking greater ... Read More

Phishing attack uses DocuSign Here is a brilliant new social engineering phishing scam that you may have already seen. It will sail through all your spam / malware filters and email protection devices, because it's entirely legit by using the Docusign infrastructure. Prime example of an info grabbing phishing attack that does not use a malicious payload. Easy money? Clicking on the yellow "Review Document" button gets you to—again an entirely legit—Docusign page, which requires you to fill out the form as per the normal process. I broke it up in two parts. The top half is more or less normal for a loan application. But wait, the second half really takes the cake. Looking for financial information Continuing to fill out the form allows the bad guy to completely steal the ... Read More